Position in chronology
CUSAS 35, 202
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic account from Adab (modern Bismaya, southern Iraq), roughly 2500 BCE, written on a little bun-shaped clay tablet now in the Schøyen Collection. It records a delivery of equipment and manpower — nine wagons or chariots handled by a man named Šubur, four units of an unidentified commodity, three plow-heads, and a gang of workers — all charged to an institution called the "House of the Children," and dated to the month of sheep-shearing. Texts like this are the ordinary bookkeeping of a temple-and-palace economy: someone had to write down who brought what, and when, before anyone could be held to account.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
Delivery record: nine wagons, credited to Šubur; four units of *mud*; three plow-heads; and a work crew (number lost). All of it belongs to the House of the Children, and it was brought in by the responsible official. Dated to the sheep-shearing month. The opening line is broken, so the first commodity and its quantity can no longer be read.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine[n] … i-zi; 9 (ten minus one) chariots — Šubur; 4 (units of) mud; 3 plow-heads (sag-apin); [n] work-troop(s); belonging to the House of the Children (e₂-dumu); he delivered (them). Month: "Shearing-of-the-sheep-in-the-pen" (iti ga₂-udu-ur₄).
Our translation engine — Opus 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
[n] i@t-zi 1(u@c) la2 1(disz@t)# gigir2 szubur 4(asz@c) mud 3(asz@c) sag-apin [n] erin2 e2-dumu-kam an-de6 iti ga2-udu-ur4-kam
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — CUSAS 35, 202. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Schøyen Collection, Oslo, Norway (P252771) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-opus-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.